iPhone Photography Learning – Starting Out

Well – I am principled – so I won’t be giving bootleg copies or primary source information without permission. But there are publicly available videos from Emil Parkarklis of IPhone Photo Academy. In the real course the videos have a little more to them, but you can get the basic ideas.

After going thru the features and set up of the camera options on your iPhone, the first module is practicing focus and exposure. How to focus on one area, adjust focus and actually lock it. The feature puts you in control of what part of the screen will be the focus instead of the camera deciding. It seems much easier on my iPhone than on my DSLR. You are not adjusting aperture and shutter speeds or figuring out the focus points in your viewer. Now – I do like to do that and won’t give it up. But there are SO MANY times I am someplace and my phone is with me – not all my DSLR equipment. If I am going to capture things for creating the best way to do that is to have content that comes up vs planned. And when I look at it – my phone is a more expensive piece of equipment than my camera – so I should be using it for more than texting and checking social media.

The next 2 videos are promo videos but give you enough info to be curious enough to check things out on your iPhone. This is one of the times I am glad to have a directed course for learning. It is helping me move thru things more quickly and focus on what I want to learn more than trying to create my learning. I do believe there needs to be that balance and diversity – a little of it all for better learning. I am still the one designing my learning, but I am also now determining my resources to meet that learning. How cool would that be as an outcome for our K12 students – or any learner – to diversify and find the right resources for your learning goals and to put them together.

What I have learned in 2 days

How to hold my phone camera. So simple so common sense. I always held from all four corners and looked like the old grandma holding a camera. Shaky, blurry pictures – fingers in shots.

How you hold and use your body to stabilize for better shots. It’s hard to show on my own. But here is an attempt.

Hold landscape/horizontal. Two fingers under the bottom, two along the back and your thumb and forefinger on top. You will then put your other hand under and use your thumb to push the shutter. (can’t show that and take a picture). It makes a difference – and it feels cool!

To hold in portrait view – hold like you are going to text in one hand and use the other hand to support.

Common sense things like keeping your phone closer to your body instead of extending your arms, using surfaces to set your camera upon etc. help too.

Setting focus and exposure is an easy task once you know what it is and how to lock it, you should get enough from the video to figure that out. Again – I am not going to replicate the instruction but highlight things I find useful.

Burst Mode

Have you ever put your finger on the shutter button too long and get this blast of photos. Well that is burst. I never knew what to do with it.

Once you have taken a Burst – go to the photo. In your window at the bottom of the screen click on Select. You can now see all the photos taken and go thru each one and choose the ones you want to keep. The IOS choose some it thinks are good by putting a gray dot below them. You can choose the ones you want to keep and delete the rest. It is suggested to use this for action shots or shots where people are moving. Fantastic! I can’t wait to try this one.

HDR

How many of us that this meant something High Definition?

It is High Dynamic Range. And if you have it on all the time it uses up a lot of phone memory because it takes 3 pictures for every one you take to blend them together. It also makes your phone use up battery faster.

HDR doesn’t work well with a lot of movement either.

In your settings you want to make sure you have selected Keep Normal Photo so that you have that option.

The assignments are carefully explained on how to be successful in completing. First assignment is to practice selecting a focus point and locking it to take a series of pictures. You lock by keeping your finger on the little yellow box that shows up. This is a good feature when you want to make sure what you want as the focus is what is captured.